Roger and out?

It's 1981 revisited as the champion seeks a sixth successive title against his greatest rival. With Nadal in explosive form there are signs that an edgy Federer might go the same way as Borg, whose defeat by McEnroe signalled the beginning of the end for the Swede.

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the conclusion of the 2007 Wimbledon final. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

All week tension has been hanging in the Wimbledon air like a thunderstorm, as the tournament has moved towards the most anticipated men's final in 27 years. Yesterday the storm broke, when Roger Federer stopped just short of accusing his opponent this afternoon, Rafael Nadal, of cheating.

There is no way of disguising Federer's clumsy accusation that Nadal pushes the boundary of fair play with time-wasting tactics during his service game that officials, in Federer's view, consistently ignore.

Quite apart from the validity or otherwise of the allegation, it fuels the suspicion that the pressure might be getting to Federer as he seeks to do what Bjorn Borg failed to do against John McEnroe in 1981 and win his sixth straight title.

'I've played him plenty where he took his time,' Federer said. 'I mean, it's obviously a fine line, because I think until he gets into position to serve, he takes his 20 [allowed] seconds, whatever, and then takes another 10, 15 seconds until he really serves. It's a tricky situation. But the unfortunate part, let's say, is the umpire will always give him a warning, but he will never give him a point penalty. I'm not saying he abuses it, but he never really feels the heat that much.

'It used to be irritating, let's say, in the early days when I played him the fifth or sixth time, when I played him quite a few times in a row. And I really felt he was playing very slow. I think he's speeded it up a little bit since. Look, it's up to the umpire. I try to concentrate. I don't think I win or lose a match because he takes five seconds extra per point. That's not going to kill me.'

No? In the head, maybe Nadal has killed him already. Otherwise, why go on about it? There is now an edge to the match that resides with the rippling young Spaniard. Federer has given up the moral ascendancy and it could cost him the title.

Nadal has the momentum, the game and the temperament. Now he has been handed a gift, a reason to narrow his focus on an opponent who implies he is a cheat. What was already destined to be a classic final is invested with unscheduled drama.

Replying to Federer's claims, Nadal retreated behind his faltering English but his impatience surfaced, none the less. When it was explained through an interpreter that Federer had said his delaying tactics were 'cheating but not quite cheating' and that the Australian commentator Pat Cash, a former champion here, had said baldly that it was cheating, especially on vital points, Nadal's verbatim reply was: 'Well, everybody is free to says what they want. No, I'm not one for say if it's true or not. We have an umpire for decide what's happen on court, no?'

He was the very image of innocence.

This is not the first time Federer has indulged in mind games with a young rival. After Andy Murray beat him in the first round of the Dubai championships in March - Federer's first match since returning from defeat in the Australian Open - the Swiss said the Scotsman spent too much time on the baseline.

'I don't think he has changed his game a whole lot since the first time I played him and I really thought he would have done,' Federer said at the time. 'He is going to have to grind it very hard in the next few years if he is going to play this way. He stands way behind the court. You have to do a lot of running and he tends to wait for the mistakes of his opponent.'

Now it is Nadal in Federer's sights - and, on this tournament's showing, he has more reason to worry about the Spaniard than he ever will about Murray.

Nadal leads Federer 11-6 head to head, but their last contest is the most relevant, Nadal's embarrassing eclipse of Federer in the French Open. So complete was that victory on the Spanish player's favoured red clay - his fourth in a row at Roland Garros over Federer - that the Swiss's hitherto unquestioned mastery on grass is no longer enough to assume he will impose his will on Nadal as he has done here before.

Last year, their final was close. It will be this year too, although Nadal is a different player now, more complete all round, on grass or clay, as he pointed out himself yesterday. 'I don't just improve on grass,' he said. 'I improve my game.'

Nor would he be drawn on the nature of their rivalry. 'You know better than me. I'm not one to say what level. It's going to be sixth final [for him]. We are number one, number two, that's the main rivalry. For the last years we did well and I hope we continue like this for a lot of years.'

What his statement lacked in eloquence it made up for in simple truth.

This is not about tactics, equipment or playing surfaces. This is a titanic meeting of the two best players in the world - as was that historic final between Borg Borg and McEnroe. The parallels are uncanny.

The 1981 final, following Borg's defeat of the American the year before, was also a collision of contrasting psyches and attitudes: the ice-like strength of Borg and the fragile genius of McEnroe.

Maybe it was their shared left-handedness that inspired McEnroe to seek out a hit-up with Nadal before his semi-final on Friday. Or, more likely, it was the American's admiration for a talent so bursting with intuitive tennis that he saw in him a mirror of what he once was himself. While Nadal is muscular and explosive, possessed of iron-like yet supple wrists, he has a net game every bit as clever as McEnroe's used to be.

McEnroe is a huge admirer of both finalists, but Nadal is the player of this tournament, this year, this moment. There is a sense that his time is now and Federer's, while far from over, will begin to pass as their rivalry grows.

After 1981, Borg's tennis declined to the point where he drifted down from the mountain and into a netherworld of personal distress and confusion. Underneath his expression-free facade there was trouble bubbling up. McEnroe missed their clashes. He needed inspiration to touch the heights of his game and, in Borg, he had the perfect foil. It could fairly be said neither was the same again after 1981.

Borg has said as much. 'I lost my motivation a little bit when I lost to John McEnroe in the 1981 Wimbledon final. I still played good tennis but I did not have the same focus that I had for many years. If you lose that little bit of an edge it is very difficult to do well. Something was missing and for me.'

Federer-Nadal has life in it yet. A straw poll at Wimbledon gives the Spaniard 70 per cent support among the experts, many of them former players.

Murray, who lost meekly to him on Wednesday, thinks it will be Nadal; Marat Safin, whose eccentric resistance was not enough to stop Federer ghosting past him on Friday, cannot make up his crazy mind. Boris Becker picked Federer and is sticking with that prediction.

The only people certain of the result are the combatants themselves. The incumbent king does not just think he will beat the feared young Spaniard. He knows it. Just as Nadal knows it will go his way. Great players - and both finalists are unquestionably that - entertain no doubts.

Federer found rehabilitation after Paris in Halle, where he did not lose a serve, and he has looked calmly in control at Wimbledon, rarely stretched. He has not lost a set. Nadal does not have Federer's cruise-control game but his blazing muscularity has been in evidence from the first game, enough to blow away every opponent, none more convincingly than Murray in the quarter-finals.

Both have had brief anxious moments, mind - which is the way it should be in a grand slam event.

Nadal has dropped one set, to Ernests Gulbis of Latvia in the second round, and it looked as though he would drop another on Friday. When Rainer Schüttler broke Nadal early in the second set in the semi-final, having been brushed aside so easily in the first, it was as if time had been twisted, as if the order of things had been shaken by an unruly outsider. The German was 2-1 up. The Spaniard was, momentarily, simply down.

Schüttler held. As Nadal fought to regain the ascendancy with his vastly improved serve, he hit long to drop a point. Was he about to crack? No. His crashing winner presaged the revival and there was nothing Schüttler could do about it, the upset snatched from his grasp.

As he began to resurface, Nadal looked as formidable as before the blip. Those high-speed wrists, whipping through the stroke like no other player in the game can do, punched holes left and right, deep and wide. Nadal's forehand is like Floyd Mayweather's left hook: irresistible.

Schüttler was taking the pace off the ball, a la Arthur Ashe v Jimmy Connors in 1975. It made no difference. Nadal just cranked up the muscle, got the sinews to stretch just a little more spectacularly and the winners flowed.

Nadal had to come back from 5-3 down to take the set, before going on to finish his opponent off in the third, but he did as methodically as if going for a swim.

'Today maybe wasn't my best match here,' Nadal said afterwards. 'I know I now have the best player on the other side of the net.'